The Pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela is a centuries old trek across northern Spain done by following "The Camino de Santiago", the road to Santiago. Before February of 2001 I had not heard of "The Camino" nor of the Pilgrimage. By the end of October of that year I was in Santiago after completing the walk myself. I thought that when I reached Santiago my journey was over but I see now that my journey started way before I got to Spain and still has not ended.

Thursday, May 27, 2004

I grew up in Denver, Colorado not thinking about how the sky looked. It was just there, blue in the daytime and black at night. People from out of state would always talk about the sky. They would marvel at how bright the sunlight was and how blue the sky. At night they would stare in wonder at the heavens and say something about how the stars looked close enough to touch. It wasn't until my husband and I moved to Florida that I understood what people were talking about.

My husband got a job in Tampa and we made the trip to our new home by car. We were almost at the end of our long drive when we stopped at a restaurant in Jacksonville for a late dinner. As I got out of the car I looked up at the night sky and froze. Something was wrong with it. It wasn't black enough and it wasn't deep enough. I also noticed there weren't enough stars in this strange sky and the stars that were there were farther away than they should have been. Also, they didn't look right, they looked as if they were underwater. Then I understood.

I was looking at stars that were now a mile farther away from me than they had been in Denver. I was also looking at them through an atmosphere that was more dense and humid that skies above Denver. "My" stars looked like flicks of white paint on a board painted jet black. These stars were smaller flicks of white paint on black velvet.

I never did get used to that velvet night sky. When we moved back to Denver a year later I was happy. That first night back in Denver I looked up at a sky full of stars close enough to touch and I knew I was home.

This is part of a chain of posts linked together by word association. The previous link in the chain was here. If you want to write another link here's what to do: Find a word, phrase or theme from this post to inspire your own and go and write it. It's that simple. Try not to write something that's similar to this post. That way the subject of the posts along the chain will vary. E.g. if I write about going to the doctor's, then don't talk about the last time you were ill, instead describe how you used to play Doctors and Nurses with the girl next door. Get the idea? Your post can be in any style you want. Copy this paragraph and tack it onto the end of your post, updating the link to point here, then leave a comment here that points to your new post.

Tuesday, May 25, 2004

I love black and white photography. It speaks to me in a way that color photography does not. Now, I am not saying that I don't like color photography, just that black and white touches me in a different way. My brain sees a black and white photo differently than it does a color one.

Color photos explode in my face and take my breath away, color photos demand to be looked at, color photos vibrate. Color photos make me take a mental step back as I look at them. When I look at a color photo some of the colors looks as if I touched them my fingers, well, my fingers would sink into photo and then come away dripping that color off the tips.

Black and white photos are different. Black and white photos are soothing, black and white photos draw me in, black and white photos whisper. Black and white photos make me take a mental step closer to examine them carefully. With a black and white photo my brain can see deeper because is not distracted by the colors the way it is with a color photo.

For me, if color photography was music it would be Rock And Roll and black and white photography would be Classical. Neither one better that the other just different.

This is part of a chain of posts linked together by word association. The previous link in the chain was here. If you want to write another link here's what to do: Find a word, phrase or theme from this post to inspire your own and go and write it. It's that simple. Try not to write something that's similar to this post. That way the subject of the posts along the chain will vary. E.g. if I write about going to the doctor's, then don't talk about the last time you were ill, instead describe how you used to play Doctors and Nurses with the girl next door. Get the idea? Your post can be in any style you want. Copy this paragraph and tack it onto the end of your post, updating the link to point here, then leave a comment here that points to your new post.

Friday, May 21, 2004

It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.
-Carl Sandburg

The town was covered in fog this morning. Joke-What is fog? Answer-A cloud that knows someone. I love walking in fog. I took the dogs out west of town to run, walking in the middle of the dirt road that climbs up the hill there. A wind was blowing the small drops of cloud condensation in my face, making the tiny drops sting as the hit me. I walked up and out of the fog as I climbed the hill. When I got to the top I looked back at the town and could only make out the tree tops peeking through the mist. The clouds spread across the sky above me looked as if a giant wet hand had smoothed the undersides of them, blending them all together in one great smear of grey. The sunlight had been diffused by this mass, causing the underside of the clouds glow.

I turned and watched my dogs as they hunted for the scent of bird or rabbit in the field to my right. Today Kate was in the lead with Emma right on her tail. Whenever Kate stopped to sniff at something Emma would rush up to thrust her nose right at the spot were Kate's nose was holding. Somedays when they hunt Kate lets Emma do all the work. When Emma takes off on a run Kate stands still watching her. She lets Emma run around searching for a scent. When Emma finally stops, because she thinks has found something, Kate races over to see if anything is there. If there is a scent, Kate follows it, if not, she just watches Emma again as she runs off searching for another scent.

I start walking again and pass a field that has had it's wheat crop plowed under. Last Friday night the temperatures dropped below freezing killing any wheat that was at the flowering stage. Last week this field was covered in a thick blanket of green wheat. Today its covered with a brown blanket of dirt that has a swirling pattern of green and yellow lines running through it. The green and yellow lines are dead, uprooted wheat plants. I swear if farmers weren't farmers they would be professional gamblers and living in Las Vegas.

By the time we head back to the truck the dogs look like they have been sprayed with an undercoating of wet dirt. Their legs, chest, belly and butts are covered in mud. When I call they run up to me panting, with big smiles on their faces. They have had a productive morning and I take them home and reward them with breakfast.

Wednesday, May 19, 2004

Finally. Finally. Finally. Today I took the Continuous Passive Resistance machine back to Apria. Since the day I brought it home I have not had one restful night. I have been operating sleep deprived for about four weeks.

My husband sleeps better when I am lying beside him-which is great because I feel the same way. So, for 28 nights I have been sharing a bed with him and that damn machine. The thing took up one-quarter of the bed and made this low noise when it was on. A kind of noise that would wake me up at least four times a night because it was the same sound the refrigerator started making just before we replaced it. Add to that my husband's snoring-something he does when he sleeps on his back. Add his need to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night; which I normally sleep through but since he had to untangle himself from the machine, the bedsheets, the blanket, and then scoot himself down to the end of the bed to get out of it, his leaving would wake me up. So, I've been walking around in a kind of zombie state for the last two weeks. My mind is operating on a two seconds delay in processing information.

My husband is almost as glad as me to see that machine go. The last week of lying with his leg in that machine was torure for him. He is not a back sleeper so being forced to lie in that postion for eight hours was almost unbearable for him. But he did it because he knew it would help his knee heal faster.

We are both looking forward to tonight. Tonight we get to sleep in a bed that now looks five times larger without that machine in it. A bed in which we both can stretch out. A bed in which we can both get a good night's sleep.

Thursday, May 13, 2004

What we have here is failure to communicate.
-Strother Martin in Cool Hand Luke

Found an amusing website called This is Broken. People send in examples of places, things, and websites that have had a serious break down in communication. My two favorite so far are this sign and this audio clip.

Tuesday, May 11, 2004

There was a hot desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On a night like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of a carving knife and study their husbands' necks. Anything can happen.
- Raymond Chandler's opening paragraph in his short story "Red Wind."

Temperatures in the upper 80F's/20C's with winds gusting between 40-44 mph. The National Weather Service has issued the following advisories:
Tornado Watch
High Wind Warning
Wind Advisory
Hazardous Weather Outlook

Two days of this now. My husband's neck is begining to look very interesting.

Monday, May 10, 2004

As I was going up the stair
I met a man who wasn't there.
He wasn't there again today.
I wish, I wish he'd go away.-Hughes Mearns

Got to write these two things down or I will never get them out of my head.

I had a strange experience early yesterday morning when I took my dogs for a run. It happened when I was heading back to my truck. While I was walking I looked around to see where my dogs were and saw Kate to the right of me out of the corner of my eye. I then looked down the road toward where my truck was parked. The road was empty- no cars, no people, no animals. Then about 40 feet in front of me a dog appeared in the middle of the road.

At first I was confused because I thought what I was seeing was Kate and could not understand how she got down there so fast. I was looking straight at the dog when it disappeared. I mean, one second it was there and the next it was gone. As my mind was trying to grasp what I had just seen Kate ran across the road about five feet in front of me. I wondered if what I had seen had been Emma and looked around for her. She was behind me, far out in a CRP field. What ever I saw, it wasn't one of my dogs.

The whole thing spooked me. One second I was looking down an empty road and the next instant there was a dog trotting down the middle of it and then, click, the dog was gone. When I replayed what I had seen in my mind I realized the dog I had seen was larger than both my dogs. It had a long tail, a coat like a collie, and it was kind of dirty white and brownish in color. My dogs are small, have very short tails, a uncollie like coat, and they are white with brown cow markings.

What had I seen, a ghost dog?

Later that morning I was sitting outside in the shade of my garage reading the Sunday Denver Post when I became conscious of the fact that a dove had just flown over my head for the third time. It came from somewhere behind me right over the garage roof and straight above my head. It landed on the top of a telephone pole in the alley.

The reason I noticed it was because each time it flew over my head it would coo very loudly. The third time I heard the bird I looked straight up and watched as it soared over the roof of the garage, dropped down a bit right above me, and then swooped up as it came in for a landing on top of the telephone pole. This happened three or four more time.

Each time I heard the loud cooing over my head I would look up and watch as the bird swooped over me and up to the top of the pole. Each time, after he landed he would turn around and look down at me. Well, after the sixth or seventh time I got up and walk around to the side of my house to see if the bird bath had water in it. It didn't. I looked up at where the dove had been sitting but he was gone. I looked up at the telephone pole that is placed right on the other side of the wall between my yard and the alley. This telephone pole is directly across from the birdbath. At the top sat the dove. I filled the birdbath and then went inside the house and brought out a slice of bread. I crumpled it up into little pieces and lay the pieces on top of the wall. The dove watched all of this very closely.

After I finished I stood in the driveway waiting for the dove to fly down to eat or drink but he didn't move. He just stared down at me from the top of the pole. I figured he wasn't going to come down until I left so I went back into the house. I was going to watch him from the kitchen window but got distracted and forgot about him. Later I noticed the bread crumbs were gone.

Was all of this a coincidence or was the dove trying to get my attention with all those flyovers?

Friday, May 07, 2004

Tue-April 20thToday is my husband and my anniversary and we spend the morning driving to Denver where I put him on a plane for Boise, Idaho. He is going to have knee surgery and will be spending the next nine days up there. We have a friend who is a orthopedic surgeon and he will be doing the operation. I plan on spending tonight and tomorrow at my sister's house.

Wed.-April 21thDrive my niece to school and spend the day helping my sister connect her computer to wireless Internet. After that I go and pick my niece up from school and drive her home. Whenever I am in Denver I try to drive my niece to and from school because it gives me extra time with her. She is a big, big South Park fan and we talk about that and what is going on in her life. My husband calls to say the surgery went well. After he hangs up, Mike, our doctor friend, calls to tell me everything went well in a little more detail. He is a good man. My sister ask me to stay another day and I do.

Thu.-April 22thDrive my niece to school again in the morning and spend the day shopping for stuff I cannot get at home. Go to Borders and end up buying a copy of Lily Dale:the true story of the town that talks to the dead.* Its a book about the town where the Spiritualist movement in this country is centered. I enjoy it so much I read it in one day. Again pick up my niece and drive her home from school.

I notice there is a strange kind of wound on the inside of Kate's right leg just above what would be the ankle on a human. The wound 1 cm by 3 cm, well, its not really a wound but an area where all the hair is missing. I can see the skin but Kate does not act like it is hurting and the area does not look like it is infected. Maybe she tripped and scrapped the hair off coming up the wooden steps to my sisters back deck.

Fri-April 23thWake up to a snowstorm and the weathermen on TV asking anyone who could to just stay home. I decide to stay another day. My sister decides my niece should not go to school and she and I stay home and just hang out. Sometimes she goes outside and plays with the dogs or to build small snowanimals. My sister goes to work but at 2:00 PM calls to say she is has been sent home. By the time she gets home the storm has eased up. In fact its not as bad as expected, with the ground so warm that the six inches that has fallen so far already melting.

We decide to go to Barnes and Noble Bookstore over on Colorado Blvd in Glendale and peruse the books. My niece is spending the weekend with her father and since Barnes and Noble is close to where he works he comes by the store after work to pick her up. I cannot seem to get out of a bookstore without buying something and I leave with two books for myself ( A Woman's Book of Strength: an empowering guide to total mind/body fitness, The Waking Dream: unlocking the symbolic language of our lives) and two books (Ain't misbehavin', Killing Dragons:the conquest of the alps) as Get Well gifts for my husband.

After leaving the bookstore my sister and I decide to eat dinner at Las Delicias just around the corner-good Mexican food. When we get there the parking lot is jammed full of cars. Since we are very hungry we don't stop but head for a place my sister knows about on Hampton Ave. Funny, when we first headed for Las Delicias I thought, "We're going to end up at The Bent Noodle." Now we are driving to a part of town I don't know very well and when we get to the restaurant we find out it is not the one my sister was thinking about. We drive on and then turn down a street I've never been on before looking for any Mexican restaurant. We are almost to Parker Road when my sister points out that The Bent Noodle is to the left of us. We eat there, how can you fight what's meant to be?

Sat-April 24th/ Wed-April 27thSaturday I drive home and am surprised by how fast the week passes. On Wednesday my husband calls and ask me to pick up a machine that will help rehab his leg from Apria, a nationwide home medical supply provider. I have two choices, either to go to a town about a two hour drive from my home or to wait and get one up when I drive to Denver to pick him up at the airport tomorrow. I decide to pick it up at the town closer to our house and get it that afternoon.

Thu-April 28th I load up the leg machine and the dogs and drive to Denver. My husband wanted to drive straight home from the airport but I convince him that it would be better if we stay at my sisters for the night. When we get there he falls asleep on the couch and when he wakes up admits he is glad we are staying the night.

Fri-April 29thWake up to another snowstorm and decide not to drive home today. Storm not that bad in town and I drive my niece to school. As we are driving I realize that each time I have driven my niece to school during the last two weeks it has been effortless. No matter what lane I am in it is the correct lane to be in. I will move over from one lane to the other, not know why, and after I do the person three cars ahead of me in the lane I just left will slow down to turn causing the other cars in that lane to stop. Another time I am in a lane moving quickly when, just before a turn in the road, I move over to the other lane. Then as I round the corner I see a city bus stopped and watch in the rear view mirror as the cars in the lane I was just in come to a complete stop. I don't second guess myself, I just follow every "whim" and drift though traffic. At every moment I am exactly where I should be at that exact moment.

Then I am aware of the fact that my life has had that same feeling of being exactly where I should be at that moment ever since I dropped my husband off at the airport. It is the same way I felt on my walk but without the dreaminess. I was worried that during the time I spent at home without my husband I would get anxious and depressed like I usually do when he is gone. His leaving always taps into that fear of being abandoned that is left over from my childhood and buried deep inside me. But this time the fear didn't materialize and I now think it is gone forever. I don't know why and I don't know how but it is gone.

When I get back from taking my niece to school my husband and I drive across town to the Apria store in Littleton to trade the machine we have for another one. The one I got has a problem and is making a grinding noise when in use. When we get back I take my dogs for a walk at the dog park.

At the park I talk to another dog owner who turns out to be a student Vet Tech. I ask her if she would look at Kate's wound because I'm not sure if it is healing well. I noticed it was slightly swollen last night. She looks at it and says it looks like it might be infected so I walk the dogs over to my sisters Vet (who's office is two blocks away) and have him look at it. He drains blood and pus out of the wound and says it looks like a spider bite. Spider or snake bites cause the hair to fall out at the site of the bite. He gives me antibiotics and tells me to put wet hot packs on the wound for the next three days.

Sat-April 30thWe drive home and all of us, the dogs too, are glad to be here.

UpdateKate is doing fine. Her wound has healed but the hair has not grown back.

My husband is doing great and getting around on crutches. The sound of him walking on them makes me feel like I am living with a pirate. When he walks the crutches make a big thump as he sets them down and then a metallic clicking sound. So when he walks around the house I hear, "Thump-click, thump-click, thump-click."

I guess there were some milestones. I know my fear of abandonment is gone. I know what it feels like to live your life in the present, which I now see is what was happening those ten days. I think if you can do that, live in the present, you can plug into something that teaches you that you are always exactly where you are supposed to be in lifeand your life is easier. Its fighting the flow of your life that makes things difficult.

Oh, there were also some synchronistic things that happened during those ten day but I'm not ready to talk about them yet.

*I've linked the book titles to Amazon.com but only because it is easy to do.

I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.- Agatha Christie

Sunday, May 02, 2004

Saturday, May 01, 2004

Been gone 10 days and totally out of Internet touch for 8 days. Am going to spend tomorrow reading everyone else's blogs to catch up with what you all have been doing while I was away. At this point I am curious to find out if Miss Elaine has had comments re-installed and to see how visible Semi-Invisible Blue Witch has become.

Monday I will let you know if my horoscope turned out to be correct (clue- if it has its not in the way I expected).